Technic of Free-Hand Drawing

object, drawings, line, lines, projections, pencil, pen and paper

TECHNIC OF FREE-HAND DRAWING. The fundamental principles of the art are the same. what ever the medium employed. Good drawMg de mands. first of all, a trained sense of form: that is. the power to observe. to understand and ap preciate, to remember. and to represent. form in general: or. in other words. the mastery of pro portion. In drawing from any object or model. the first essential is to observe. and sketch in. the dominant structural lines. contours, and masses. including the conspicuous high light, and deeper shades and shadows. The more important details are next added and eorrected. and the minor details are left to the last. In executing these various stages of the drawing, lightness of touch and sureness of line are important qualities. at tained only by long and patient discipline. Taste and imagination are both exercised in the
of what to show and what to omit. while experi ence alone endows the artist with the knowledge of the most effective methods for expressing the facts and aspects he is seeking, to record.

But the detailed technique of drawing varies greatly with the medium employed. The chief instruments are the pencil. pen, black crayon. charcoal. and
Of these. the pen is the most exacting. since it makes an
black mark on the white paper, and tints must be ex pressed by dots. closely serried lines. and eross hatehing. The masters of I11.11 drawing are in varialdy masters of pure line. With charcoal or era von sauce the artist must. as it were. paint on his paper. fine lines being nut of the question: so also with the brush, in sepia and other 'wash' drawings. The pencil and crayon occupy a mid db. ground. requiring the use of the line, but per mitting broad. soft strokes and ,t1.111114e41 or rubbed in shading. Very effective drawings :ire made by using a tinted raper—gray or pale blue on which tile high lights are laid on in white with chalk or t hinese white, and the darker rOlatle, arid 111:1—•e• with the pencil. Willie the tone
the paper is lett to represent the intermediate tallies. The gr, master- of the Ileimissance, ho king the
or phut lingo pencil. which is a Hakim invention. used the lead point or a silver point 011
or heavy paper, giving pale gray line: er more often.
or red chalk. The quill 14111k Ilie place of the modern steel pen. making a softer and broader stroke.

t.L DUANVENC. For ,Cielltifie pur poses., for the working drawings from which buildings and machinery are to be made and ereeted. and for all purposes requiring great ex actitude of representation, a different sort of delineation is necessary from that of the artist working with free hand. Freedoind drawings are

personal interpretations of visible form: in this lies their charm. Their value is artistic, not scientific: 1141 t‘VO drawings of the same object by different persons, or by the same person at differ ent
can be absolutely alike. In nirchanica/ or
drawing, on 1.110 other hand, mathematical exactness of line and dimension is secured by the use of various instruments. the most important of these being the T-square, rule, and triangles. used in drawing right lines: com passes for drawing circles and arcs of
for laying off exact distances. the scale for determining and measuring dimensions. the protractor for laying off angles. and the ruling pen for drawing clean and faultless lines in ink: besides a considerable number of special appli ances which cannot here he enumerated. The ob ject of drawings executed by these means is not to present the aspects of objects as we see them, but to furnish scientitieally correct graphie re• ords of the actual proportions and form-relations of objects. usually at a much redueed scale. This is effected by mean of projections upon imagin ary v•rtieal and horizontal planes. called plan, s of prohetion, two dimensions of the object being shown in each projection. These projections com prise phins or top views. showing the object as if seen frtati an infinite height above; (*rations or front. side, and rear views. as if seen from a point infinitely distant horizontally: and sections, \\bleb show the object as if sliced in two and the nearer half removed. exposing the interior struc ture. These projections show the correct geo metrical relation- of the various dimensions and parts of Lilo structure or object. and by the use of two or more projections all its dimensional relations arc exhibited. To assist the eye in in terpreting these highly eonventional 11 raw
which are really not
but diagrams— they are often iespecially in architectural draw ings) made v, ith the shallows east as if by sun light. falling I n the object in each projection at an as-wiled and uniform angle. This angle is
so take n that the rays, falling front in front of 111e vertical plane, downward to the right, are projected at 45° to the ground line on either projection. The delineation of these eon
sl•ado•s is a branch of descriptive geometry. lid received the name of ,vrioy rapt .